1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus for harvesting fruit or the like, and more particularly, to a fruit harvester which includes a system for the selective filling and handling of storage bins used to transport the fruit from the orchard.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A number of patents have been issued on fruit harvesting machines which combine a device for shaking the fruit tree together with a means for collecting the fruit as it falls. The advantages of these machines lie in their greatly decreased need for human labor and the consequent savings in harvesting costs. One such fruit harvesting machine is described in the U.S. patent to Adrian (U.S. Pat. No. 3,596,455). The machine disclosed therein, although complex in design, combines a series of easily understood operations. The harvester, which is mobile, proceeds between two rows of fruit trees gathering fruit alternately from trees on either side. A means for grasping and shaking an individual tree is provided on the front end of the fruit harvester. Once the fruit harvester is in place, a structure resembling an inverted umbrella extends beneath the circumference of the tree, forming a large surface to catch the fruit as it falls. The tree is then shaken causing the fruit to fall into the "umbrella". The catching surface is inclined so that the fruit falls by gravity toward its center where the fruit collects on one of two conveyor belts located on each side of the shaker mechanism and running parallel to the vehicle axis. The fruit is continuously transported to the rear of the vehicle where it is collected into a single bin supported by a pair of forks cantilevered from the rear of the vehicle.
The fruit harvester itself, of course, is only part of the total operation involved in retrieving fruit from the various trees and collecting that fruit at a central point in the orchard where it may be loaded onto trucks and transported to market. The remainder of that operation requires people and machines to continually pick up full fruit bins and provide empty bins so that the fruit harvester may continue to operate. In particular, a vehicle is required to carry bins between the field and the central collection point.
A problem with dual-conveyor harvesters previously available has been difficulty in coordinating the location of the bin-feeding vehicle with that of the harvester so that an empty bin is available when and where required by the harvester. This is because the dual-conveyor design lends itself to utilization of a single fruit collection bin on the harvester. Since only one bin is available on the machine, an empty bin must be available immediately upon the filling of the bin then in place on the fruit harvester. Since bins are filled in a matter of minutes, the bin-feeding vehicle is often enroute to or from the central collection point at the time a new bin is required by the fruit harvester. This causes the fruit harvester to remain idle while waiting for delivery of an empty bin. This problem is accentuated when the fruit bins are filled with chilled water in order to preserve fruit, such as cherries, which deteriorate rapidly unless cooled promptly after harvesting. Such bins, weighing several thousand pounds, must be handled entirely by machine and the simultaneous presence of both the feeder and the harvester is required to effect a transfer. Often either the bin-feeding vehicle or the harvester is forced to wait for the other until the time comes to transfer the bin and the result is inefficient use of the equipment.
A second disadvantage of the prior art is the necessity of having one or more persons standing near the empty fruit bin to assist in loading this fruit bin onto the fruit harvester. Often an empty bin which is not water-filled will be left by the bin-feeding vehicle at a point that is remote from the location of the harvester when a new bin is required. The bin is then manually carried to the harvester so that idle time will be minimized. This, of course, requires additional labor.
A fruit harvester capable of carrying two fruit bins is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,617 issued to Vallicella. That harvester utilizes a single longitudinally oriented conveyor to transport fruit from the collection surface to the rear where a baffle selectively deflects the fruit into either of two bins. This approach is unworkable on a harvester utilizing dual conveyors with termination points some distance apart.